Twenty bucks. That's what some US theatres jacked the price of a single ticket up to with the arrival of the fourth Shrek movie last week. The running joke was that it was cheaper for New York residents to take their family to see the live Broadway musical version of Shrek than to check out the big screen version. This is not actually the case, what with the Broadway version having just closed, but the stage show is moving to Chicago, and having just checked the prices that particular joke is shockingly close to the truth. So in honor of the big green being demanded by Big Green I'm saying a hearty 'screw you' to the cinema experience this week and recommending a little something from the video library instead. This decision is made somewhat easier by the fact that only two features are being released this week and I don't much care for either - Jake Gyllenhaal just seems horribly miscast as an action hero in Prince of Persia while Micmacs is pleasant enough but kind of paint by numbers by Jeunet standards. But even if it were a stronger week, this would still be my choice.
Ladies and gentlemen, this week is the week Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog arrives on Blu-ray. If, by some freakish chance, you are unfamiliar with the genius of Joss Whedon in general and Dr. Horrible in particular, now is the time to correct this gross oversight. Whedon, for the uninitiated, is JJ Abrams' only significant rival for the title of King of the Geeks, a title he claimed as the creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel and the grossly underseen space western Firefly, which still ranks in my books as one of the greatest pieces of television ever created and shame on Fox for treating it so damn badly. In the big screen world, Whedon also wrote Alien: Resurrection -- not so great -- and the original Toy Story, which is a credit just about any writer would kill for. And of all of his stuff, I'd say Dr. Horrible is the most Whedon-y.
It should be, really. After a string of bad experiences with major studios of both the television and film variety -- big business is not generally kind to creators with as many idiosyncrasies as Whedon -- he basically just said, "Screw it. Why do I need them anyway?" And then he called up some friends, assembled a small crew, and wrote a musical about a would-be supervillain in love with a girl from the local laundromat. And then he distributed it directly to fans online.
Why is it awesome? There's the Joss factor, of course. Which means it's clever and witty and funny. Which may sound like three different ways of saying the same thing but they're all different, really. Whedon's done musicals before and he's damn good at them. The song and dance bits aren't as complex as the musical episode of Buffy but they're still pretty damn good, particularly when you consider that they were pulled off at a fraction of the cost with a skeleton crew. But beyond Joss it's all about Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion. Fillion, for my money, is one of the great, under-appreciated talents in the film world today. This man could be a cult god if he wanted to be, and he's consistently done his best work for Whedon both as the lead in Firefly and as Dr. Horrible's swaggering nemesis Captain Hammer in this. And as the horrible doctor himself, Harris is absolutely brilliant. The former Doogie Howser donned the Horrible lab coat just as his current career spike was beginning to blow up and the way he merges his insecurities over the lovely object of his affections and his insecurities about measuring up to the lofty standards set by uber-villain Bad Horse -- an actual horse -- is what has propelled Dr. Horrible into the highest levels of the cult pantheon.
In short, the movies on screens this week are mediocre and overpriced, while Dr. Horrible is fantastic and yours to own and love forever in glorious high definition for significantly less than the price of a movie ticket. Easy choice.